Several more years? This whole tanking concept has just about been beaten to death, but how would you feel if the following scenario took place:

- Masai blows up the whole team except JV. To get a high chance at a high lottery pick, virtually every decent asset currently on the team would have to be moved for scraps. If "good prospects" are returned, as many speak of, then if they really are good prospects, they may very perform as well, or close to the young players we gave away, shoving the "tank" down the drain.
- So let's say the team is bad enough to have the 3rd worst record in the league, just like 2010-11. We not only lose the lottery, but drop to the 5th pick, which many tank proponents say is good enough for next year.
- So now we're picking the 5th best prospect, who just doesn't pan out (happens often) or worse, blows his knee out, a la Oden.
- We're left with JV, scraps, and a disabled draft pick and looking at more than "several" more bad years.

so your argument is what if the pick ends up a bust? well yes, thats what the draft can be like.

Who says Gay or JV can't become elite? Even so look at Golden State. They don't have any Elite players (i don't consider Steph Curry elite i'm sorry).

Right now there is just too much uncertainty with this team. The roster is completely different from how we started off last season and the "main guy" has also changed from Lowry/DeRozan to Rudy Gay. We still don't know how Lowry will play, How much DeRozan has improved, How much Gay as improved, How much amir has improved, how much JV has improved, etc...
On top of that, the front office has been shaken up big time and so has the coaching staff. Who's to say the Raptors have a Franchise year and have 1 maybe even 2 or 3 all stars?

My point is that, it is too early to tell how good or bad this team will be. IMO it is not a good idea to blow it up for the billionth time, we should just ride with it.

whos to say if andrea bargnani had 1 more season in toronto he would have finally broken out and scored 30 a night? same useless ranting.

whos to say if andrea bargnani had 1 more season in toronto he would have finally broken out and scored 30 a night? same useless ranting.

As useless as ranting about how tanking (despite the fact that about 1/4 of the league will be tanking next season) is a sure-fire way to land the next franchise talent, like LBJ or KD??

I have stated that I understand the allure and potential benefits of tanking, so I just expect the pro-tankers to openly admit the extreme amount of risk and luck involved with an all-out tanking strategy. The way some pro-tankers talk on RR (not necessarily you specifically), all Toronto needs to do is decide to tank and, voila, Wiggins will be automatically be a Raptor and is absolutely guaranteed to fulfill the once-in-a-generation, franchise-altering hype that surrounds him. I'm sorry, but it's not that simple.

CONS TO TANKING
- many teams doing it, plus some teams will just suck naturally
- even if Toronto was the only team tanking, having a bottom-3 record is not a sure thing
- even if Toronto finishes with a bottom-3 record, getting a top-3 pick is not a sure thing (lottery luck)
- even if Toronto wins the lottery, there's no guarantee that the draft pick will fulfill potential
- lots of talent/potential will be dumped in favor of draft picks, with no guarantee that drafted players will ever be better than players traded away
- another season of [deliberate] losing will turn off more fans
- another season of [deliberate] losing will turn off some agents/free agents (and Toronto is already not a highly desirable landing spot)
- another season of [deliberate] losing, followed by anything short of the draft pick(s) becoming a superstar/all-star caliber player, will be met with lots of blowback from fans/media/players/agents/free agents
- with all the teams tanking this upcoming season, quite a few of them are going to come away from the 2014 draft sorely disappointed, with relatively nothing of significance to show for their year of tanking
- failed tanking results in the team having far fewer tradeable assets at their disposal for rebuilding (having traded them all away for expiring contracts and draft picks), which is only magnified for teams that aren't top free agent destinations (ie: Toronto)

I just can't see TL/MU adopting tanking as their strategy, given all of the above, when you consider that they were brought in to turnaround the culture/indentity/perception of a perpetually losing franchise. It just doesn't make any logical sense to me, because tanking is far from a guaranteed success, especially this upcoming season. I think it makes more sense for MU to be an opportunistic vulture, to grab young/talented players that other teams are casting off as they go all-in with tanking.

I'm personally not in favour of tanking next season, but to add fuel to the fire for tankers let's assume the Raptors tanked and missed out on a stud (due to injury; got a bad pick; or just screwed up the draft).... well the Grizzlies tanked for Lebron, and because of their stupid protection their pick went to Detroit.

Memphis had a 28-46 record in 2002-2003.
Memphis had a 50-32 record in 2003-2004.

There was not much significant roster movement, but turned things around based on organic growth alone.

So even if the Raptors do tank, and miss out on a stud, they could still theoretically rebound and become a playoff team the next season.

Who are the Cavaliers actually interested in trading for? Chris Grant has been all talk but no action these past couple of years.
12:41

Sam Amico: I don't think the Cavs are ready to give up on LaMarcus Aldridge -- especially after the rumors that he wants out of Portland. But I really think the Cavs need to make a splash this summer. Or at least a ripple. And I can tell you, Grant is trying, man. He's trying. But he sure isn't gonna tell me what he's doing, and I can't say I blame him.

As useless as ranting about how tanking (despite the fact that about 1/4 of the league will be tanking next season) is a sure-fire way to land the next franchise talent, like LBJ or KD??

I have stated that I understand the allure and potential benefits of tanking, so I just expect the pro-tankers to openly admit the extreme amount of risk and luck involved with an all-out tanking strategy. The way some pro-tankers talk on RR (not necessarily you specifically), all Toronto needs to do is decide to tank and, voila, Wiggins will be automatically be a Raptor and is absolutely guaranteed to fulfill the once-in-a-generation, franchise-altering hype that surrounds him. I'm sorry, but it's not that simple.

CONS TO TANKING
- many teams doing it, plus some teams will just suck naturally
- even if Toronto was the only team tanking, having a bottom-3 record is not a sure thing
- even if Toronto finishes with a bottom-3 record, getting a top-3 pick is not a sure thing (lottery luck)
- even if Toronto wins the lottery, there's no guarantee that the draft pick will fulfill potential
- lots of talent/potential will be dumped in favor of draft picks, with no guarantee that drafted players will ever be better than players traded away
- another season of [deliberate] losing will turn off more fans
- another season of [deliberate] losing will turn off some agents/free agents (and Toronto is already not a highly desirable landing spot)
- another season of [deliberate] losing, followed by anything short of the draft pick(s) becoming a superstar/all-star caliber player, will be met with lots of blowback from fans/media/players/agents/free agents
- with all the teams tanking this upcoming season, quite a few of them are going to come away from the 2014 draft sorely disappointed, with relatively nothing of significance to show for their year of tanking
- failed tanking results in the team having far fewer tradeable assets at their disposal for rebuilding (having traded them all away for expiring contracts and draft picks), which is only magnified for teams that aren't top free agent destinations (ie: Toronto)

I just can't see TL/MU adopting tanking as their strategy, given all of the above, when you consider that they were brought in to turnaround the culture/indentity/perception of a perpetually losing franchise. It just doesn't make any logical sense to me, because tanking is far from a guaranteed success, especially this upcoming season. I think it makes more sense for MU to be an opportunistic vulture, to grab young/talented players that other teams are casting off as they go all-in with tanking.

i don't think anyone here is saying tanking is a 100% guarantee for anything nor is anyone here saying its 'simple' or as stupid as 'tank for wiggins!'

but i'd still take 'deliberate losing' and potentially gaining picks rather than 'just losing cause we're mediocre and not gaining anything'. obviously if MU can pull off some magical trading opportunities that'd be even better.

The only way "tanking" makes sense is if Masai can arrange to have about $20 million cap space in 2015/2016 or the season after, and gets a couple of lottery picks and two additional picks in next years draft, and/or lottery picks in consecutive years. But I would say it has to be three picks next year and two in the lottery. Then you have trade chips for 2015/2016 plus cap space and you can remake the team in one off-season.

sorry i didn't make it real far but to defend myself it started with a categorically false statement for which i retorted with a list of teams to whom that statement is completely untrue. you could toss the raps next year, as built, right in that pile because

white men can't jump wrote:

Philly did not build a team properly

neither have we

white men can't jump wrote:

By the indiscriminately tanking logic....If this team blew it up except for JV, and still made the playoffs...what then? Trade JV to have worse picks and rebuild again? Fucking ridiculous.

that is fucking ridiculous but i've not seen anyone suggest anything to that effect. if we gutted this team and JV led us to the playoffs than congratulations to us, we have a top ten NBA player and the hardest part in the rebuild is complete. then you could take the assets acquired in the liquidation (cap space from the expiring and draft picks) and draft, trade, or sign players you think are complimentary to prices that are fair, instead of the wildly, irresponsibly overpaid pieces that do not fit together that we currently have.

white men can't jump wrote:

You'll notice my key point was regardless of playoffs, these following things must be constant, in which case I will have faith that the front office knows what they're doing better than legions of tank-hungry fans.
->Key issues:
-Maintain draft assets....
-Sell high on non-keepers (trust Ujiri to sort that out in terms of who to keep)
-Don't put the team in a compromising financial situation

i’m alright with that approach so long as gay is included in the non-keeper category. i’d prefer to rebuild proper and do what the cavs and wizards just did, since we have never ever done this (it seems like it, because we’ve been so bad for most of our existence, but we always went for the short cut and never got bad enough to get significantly better), but yeah, as long as gay is gone i’m fine.

what do you do with gay in 2 offseasons by the way if he puts up same numbers and he’s the best player on our team and we just spent two seasons finishing 6-8 and getting creamed in the first round? he’s not taking a 5 mil per paycut down to what he’s actually worth. not after he just led us to false relevancy. this scenario scares the crap out of me.

that is fucking ridiculous but i've not seen anyone suggest anything to that effect. if we gutted this team and JV led us to the playoffs than congratulations to us, we have a top ten NBA player and the hardest part in the rebuild is complete. then you could take the assets acquired in the liquidation (cap space from the expiring and draft picks) and draft, trade, or sign players you think are complimentary to prices that are fair, instead of the wildly, irresponsibly overpaid pieces that do not fit together that we currently have.

See "White Men Can't Jump"? just like paint by numbers. The other GMs want to see us do well, and the big FAs are going to flock to us with our cap space and the same promise as we'll give JV (below).

chris, so if you've given away all your legit player assets, except JV, for expirings and draft picks, what do you have to "trade" to get anything of value if JV performs like that? You have no tradeable players apparently, they'd all be FAs. Trade all the draft picks ya got back to teams that will give you worse than you gave, or tell Jonas not to worry, trust us, we'll have a real team with a few more drafts and 6 more years of developing the high schoolers we have our eyes on?

If we keep Gay, I honestly think we're just drifting right back to mediocrity. This franchise simply does not know how to properly rebuild a team, mainly thanks to Mr. Colangelo. He never did a full rebuild, what he did was retooling. The problem is, when you're not a play-off team, you can't exactly retool that team. Gay and DeRozan just don't fit together very well, they make each other redundant because they have the same style of play: inefficient slashers. One of them needs to go, and it could probably be Gay because of his huge contract. We need to aim for picks in return though, preferably in next year's draft. If we can those picks from a team that is possibly interested in Gay (eg. Pistons, Timberwolves, Kings), then I say take them. We could use those picks to trade up further in the draft, depending on our position.

Also, depending on what other moves the Raps make, I believe this team could still sneak into the play-offs, even if Gay or DeRozan are traded. A line-up of Lowry, Ross, DeRozan, (or Ross and Gay), Johnson, and Valanciunas, with (just some possibilities) Dragic, Fields, Novak, Robin Lopez, Derrick Williams, or whatever we get back from those trades, coming off the bench, we could sneak into the play-offs as the 8th seed, and still get an okay pick in the draft. We'll have to trust Masai on this, there are many different ways this organization could head into, we'll just have to wait and see.

See "White Men Can't Jump"? just like paint by numbers. The other GMs want to see us do well, and the big FAs are going to flock to us with our cap space and the same promise as we'll give JV (below).

chris, so if you've given away all your legit player assets, except JV, for expirings and draft picks, what do you have to "trade" to get anything of value if JV performs like that? You have no tradeable players apparently, they'd all be FAs. Trade all the draft picks ya got back to teams that will give you worse than you gave, or tell Jonas not to worry, trust us, we'll have a real team with a few more drafts and 6 more years of developing the high schoolers we have our eyes on?

no, pooka, you use the draft picks acquired, which are quite valuable as either cheap talent or for providing flexibility, to trade for players you like or use them if there are prospects you like. you can use the expirings to sign players to non-fucking retarded contracts like rudy gay's. and i'm not talking about going after lebron next summer. i'm talking about reasonably priced players the talent evaluator's on the team have deemed a good fit along your core. maybe someone of david west's level, or redick, or even martell webster. or amir johnson, which in hindsight was pretty good. whatever. the player's are meaningless the point is they don't have gay's contract. then you can be smart with the contracts, maintain flexibility, get better incrementally, and trade or sign for a bigger free agent down the or a harden whose team can't afford him, etc, when the opportunity arises.

we should have quite a fuckin haul from those of us delusional enough to think rudy gay is worth the number one overall pick plus tristan thompson.

that's just for white men can't jump's hypothetical where JV turns into one of the best players in the league.

the other possibility is that he's not quite at that level and we are pretty bad and actually use the draft picks we acquire and build through the draft for a couple of years. like cleveland or washington.

and of course the possibility exists that that just doesn't work out for us. i can live with that. i'd rather give it a shot then stick to the treadmill. and i do think that if you're patient enough you'll end up with talent even if you suck at evaluating it, like minnesota.

See "White Men Can't Jump"? just like paint by numbers. The other GMs want to see us do well, and the big FAs are going to flock to us with our cap space and the same promise as we'll give JV (below).

chris, so if you've given away all your legit player assets, except JV, for expirings and draft picks, what do you have to "trade" to get anything of value if JV performs like that? You have no tradeable players apparently, they'd all be FAs. Trade all the draft picks ya got back to teams that will give you worse than you gave, or tell Jonas not to worry, trust us, we'll have a real team with a few more drafts and 6 more years of developing the high schoolers we have our eyes on?

Yeah, seriously, this is the VC and Bosh strategy all over again. You cannot hope to just magically build around one good piece. And you can't expect that in liquidating pieces you don't like, you ONLY get assets that help you along that rebuild path. I'm sure everyone will only offer Toronto expiring contracts, rookie deals, and picks for the players they don't want to keep.

Who says Gay or JV can't become elite? Even so look at Golden State. They don't have any Elite players (i don't consider Steph Curry elite i'm sorry).

Right now there is just too much uncertainty with this team. The roster is completely different from how we started off last season and the "main guy" has also changed from Lowry/DeRozan to Rudy Gay. We still don't know how Lowry will play, How much DeRozan has improved, How much Gay as improved, How much amir has improved, how much JV has improved, etc...
On top of that, the front office has been shaken up big time and so has the coaching staff. Who's to say the Raptors have a Franchise year and have 1 maybe even 2 or 3 all stars?

My point is that, it is too early to tell how good or bad this team will be. IMO it is not a good idea to blow it up for the billionth time, we should just ride with it.

I most definitely consider Curry an elite player. If only his ankles were as elite as his skills.

But even if we don't count Curry as "elite", are the Warriors contenders? Or are they just another Atlanta Hawks (i.e. 2nd round fodder at best), who we're desperately trying to avoid becoming?